Can you ever make sense of a whole decade? That's what the National Geographic Channel tries to do with its three-part documentary on the '90s. So we get Bill Clinton, the building of the internet, Waco, O.J., the Oklahoma City bombing, Prozac, Starbucks, Tanya Harding, Kurt Loder, In Living Color, Rodney King and Reginald Denny, Anna Nicole Smith, the rise of SUVs and NMA, the fall of the Walkman and Tamagotchis, the Great Gretzky... This is starting to sound like a Billy Joel song.
The doc is narrated by Rob Lowe and commented on by an impressive roster of bold-faced names. Heavy on actors, light on thinkers. Do Matthew Perry and Sandra Bernhard really have a handle on the decade? Or would they have been better on relying on someone like, I don't know, Michael Kinsley?
On the next Nose, we didn't start the '90s, but we are reliving them through a National Geographic series,"The '90s:The Last Great Decade?"
Then, we turn our gaze to a hitherto undocumented artifact of the modern era: that uniformly blank room you see in the background of so many homemade YouTube videos.
Lastly, an old hard rock radio stationgives itself over to Jesus.
Comment below, email Colin@wnpr.org, or tweet @wnprcolin.
GUESTS:
- Jim Chapdelaine is a musician, producer, composer, and recording engineer
- Theresa Cramer is a writer and the editor of E-Content Magazine, where she covers the world of digital media
- Carolyn Paine is a dancer, choreographer, and teacher who is also the co-founder of the contemporary ballet company CONNetic Dance
